ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

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ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by wd4gdz »

This is the official announcement for Florida State University's mirror of Early Fall Tournament 3, to be held on Saturday, October 4, 2008 (pending approval from administration). This event promises to be a solid, accessible tournament especially geared toward newer players. Our goal is to attract newer players to quiz bowl by holding this early non-packet submission tournament. Here is our fee schedule:

$100 base fee per team
-$5 per working buzzer system
-$10 per full-time moderator/scorekeeper
-$10 per 200 miles traveled
Minimum fee per team: $70

We'll start check-in at 9:00 with games starting around 9:30. Further details, directions, etc. will be posted/emailed later. If you have questions or would like to register, please contact me at fsucollegebowl at yahoo dot com with the number of teams, buzzers, and staffers.

Thanks,
Billy
Last edited by wd4gdz on Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by wd4gdz »

Here are some of the teams that have signed up so far, along with how many from each team are expected.

UGA (2)
Valencia (3)
North Florida CC (1)
Central Florida CC (2)
USF (2)
ULL (1)
GA Tech (2)
Chipola (1)
South Georgia (1)
TCC (1)

Have Expressed Interest:
UF
House Team (possibly 1, but only to make the field size an even number)

Thanks,
Billy
Last edited by wd4gdz on Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:16 am, edited 11 times in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by SnookerUSF »

USF will in all likelihood send a team, even if it is just me!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Louisiana will probably be sending a team or two. Most probably one, though, depending on if people decide to get back to me.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by wd4gdz »

The field has been updated above.

I'll probably have to cap this at 20 teams, so please let me know ASAP if your team intends to come. At the moment, we have approximately 16 teams planning to come.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by wd4gdz »

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to let everyone the current status of the tournament.

Field Update: see above
Map of FSU: http://www.fsu.edu/map2007/2007-MapPRINT032500.html

I would recommend parking in the garage near the corner of W. Tennessee St. & N. Woodward Ave. (which is 70 on the map) or the parking lot located directly below the garage on the map.
We'll be meeting in the second floor of HCB (which is 4009 on the map).

If you need directions to FSU, type the following into Google Maps:
"W Tennessee St & N Woodward Ave, Tallahassee, Florida"

Buzzers: Don't forget to bring them!

Schedule: We'll start check-in at 8:45, have a quick rules meeting at 9:15, and hopefully have matches starting at 9:30. We'll likely end up with something 16 or 18 teams. Therefore, we'll split the field into two halves and run a split round-robin. Afterward, teams will be split into >2 brackets based on the split round-robin record.

If you have any questions about anything (where to stay, food options, sample question packets) please let me know.

Thanks,
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by wd4gdz »

http://www.geocities.com/fsucollegebowl ... dings.html

Here are the results from the prelims. After those 7 rounds, we took the 16 teams and divided them into 4 brackets of 4 teams each. In the finals, UGA defeated USF to win the tournament. Their prize was $80 worth of gift certificates to Barnes and Noble. Ahmad won the overall scoring prize, and Jess from North Florida won the CC scoring award. They both won $20 gift certificates to B&N.

The tournament ran a little slow, for which I apologize. Hopefully the awesomeness of the questions made up for that. As far as I could tell, everyone really enjoyed the tournament. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns though, let me know.

I think Georgia Tech has a really bright future. They'll definitely be contending for titles in the southeast when they put their best four players (Taylor, Amy, Adam, and Matt) on one team.

I was pretty happy to have 16 teams show up to this fall tournament. The first fall college tournament we hosted, way back in 2006, only had 7 teams (one of which was a house team, and another of which was a group of random high school students), and last year, we had 12. Hopefully next year we can break the 20 team barrier.

We will almost certainly host another college tournament in the spring. I hope to see you there.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant »

wd4gdz wrote: I think Georgia Tech has a really bright future. They'll definitely be contending for titles in the southeast when they put their best four players (Taylor, Amy, Adam, and Matt) on one team.
Oh man I can't wait to get back to Atlanta.

fsb
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

First of all, great job with the tournament, Billy -- everything went just fine as far as the tournament schedule went with the exception of a match or two that lasted a little too long, as you said. Otherwise, great.

I think that the main problem was that there were a few technical problems with the questions themselves, including a bit too much repeat information and bonus parts that were actually sentence fragments. In some of the packets, I found that the difficulty of the tossups didn't match the difficulty of the bonuses, which is quite unfortunate...round 8's packet in particular. The tossups were a bit easier than the bonuses in that round.
--
As for the competition:

Congratulations to UGA A for winning the tournament! Unfortunately, we didn't get to play you guys but I heard that you were fairly exceptional throughout the day. Surely, we'll meet in about a month or so, and we're definitely looking forward to that match.

I completely agree that Georgia Tech will be a great force in the Southeast in the upcoming future with their plethora of talented players. Surely, GT B caught my team on its worst packet of the day, but kudos for beating us down -- it was pretty impressive -- you guys interrupted our rhythm throughout the match...yeah we scored 30, but most of that was due to you guys being pretty quick to the buzzer. Good stuff.

To Ahmad: it was great to finally play against you for once. Good job jumping on most of the tossups that were reaching the end. Even though we lost by about 200 points, those two or three tossups made most of the difference because of your great bonus conversions. I surely hope to see you and your team in the near future.

To all the rest (as I am getting kind of tired): thanks a bunch for coming out to support FSU's tournament -- it was nice to see so many teams at a fall tournament that isn't named ACF Fall. I definitely hope that most of you will play in several more tournaments this year.
--
I hope to see most of you at ACF Fall and hopefully at least one of my "mysterious teammates" decides to play in the tournament, too :) I, like everyone else, would like to field a team of four...
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

In some of the packets, I found that the difficulty of the tossups didn't match the difficulty of the bonuses
I'm kind of confused about what that means. By definition, a good bonus will have 3 different questions within it that ask for things at varying levels of difficulty (easy, medium, and hard), while a tossup will consist of one question that hopefully can be converted by a lot of teams, thus making it impossible for a tossup and a good bonus to have the same difficulty.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by Ondes Martenot »

I think what he's trying to say was that in one round, the tossups were of ACF Fall difficult while bonus were of ACF Regional/National. This caused to teams to get the tossups but then zero a lot of the bonuses.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by SnookerUSF »

Hello,

Teams were late and lunch took too long (the on-campus Chili's was SLOW), which was the reason I think for the late finish, but it wasn't a huge deal. I had an excellent time, and kudos should go to Billy for his generous gift-cards.

I was most pleased by the turnout, and very excited to see Georgia Tech return in such form to the Southeastern circuit. They will be quite good in a few short months, and with a very solid all-around UGA team it should make for a very competitive year. I would also like to thank Jake and the ULL team for making the I-10 trek to Tallahassee, and enjoying the beautiful Florida Panhandle; it was a fun match and you guys had a lot of positive energy which is always good for the ch'i.

I will of course refrain from any explicit references from the questions, only to say that the bonuses by and large were well matched with the tossup difficulty, though I will agree with my colleague from ULL that the bonuses in round 8 (our first playoff round), were a bit harder than any other round's bonuses. Also, I will say that this tournament as a whole is about three hours of editing from being a truly solid set. I hope Brown et. al. take the time this week to work out a few of the issues (which are not major, but did become distracting) for the benefit of next week's mirrors.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

Seven of the players I brought from Valencia were in their first-ever tournament of any level (so new they were sometimes trying to ring in on bonus parts and still getting that they can't buzz after a teammate has negged!), and all of them and their more-experienced teammates enjoyed the tournament and the questions. As a reader (and coach of truly newbie players), I think there were a couple minor examples of answers that might be outside the difficulty level of the mass of the questions, but overall the answer space was just fine.

One small thing I feel like I have to bring up as a teacher of grammar: why is it that people insist on putting periods and commas outside of closing quote marks? This is not limited to the EFT set I just read; I've seen it in lots of recent tournaments. Closing punctuations should always go inside the close quote unless you're using a question mark or exclamation point that was not part of the original's point. And while I'm being this tendentious, let me also point out that I don't see the purpose of a comma following an opening "FTP" in a question, though, as introductory material, that is more of a gray area.

Anyway, thanks to Billy and the other FSU folk for running it!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

ValenciaQBowl wrote:One small thing I feel like I have to bring up as a teacher of grammar: why is it that people insist on putting periods and commas outside of closing quote marks? This is not limited to the EFT set I just read; I've seen it in lots of recent tournaments. Closing punctuations should always go inside the close quote unless you're using a question mark or exclamation point that was not part of the original's point. And while I'm being this tendentious, let me also point out that I don't see the purpose of a comma following an opening "FTP" in a question, though, as introductory material, that is more of a gray area.
I know that CS people and possibly the British at least have higher incidence rates of putting commas outside string literals, just because the comma is not, in fact, part of the string. I remember one example in the questions I wrote over the summer where it looked absolutely ludicrous to put the comma inside, for whatever reason, but I can't remember exactly what it is. I appreciate that it's nontraditional style at best. But I think the same principle can help answer your second concern, too: these are, after all, punctuated for reading aloud, not for actual grammatical appropriateness. I've always believed, myself, that one should write "known for writing a lab report on flash chromatography right now, for 10 points identify this Harvard player" instead of having a comma after the FTP. An opening FTP makes more sense to have a comma after it, if only for rhythmic reasons, not grammatical ones.

In actual writing, I favor "correct" punctuation over the "put one where you take a breath" school of commas, which my mother indoctrinated me to hate, but I feel like when you're producing text for a few sleep-deprived individuals to read as quickly as possible, you can punctuate it with naked women if that's what it takes to make the tournament read well.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

you can punctuate it with naked women if that's what it takes to make the tournament read well
distracting . . .
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by AdamL »

With regards to bonus difficulty, after looking over the stats from FSU and UIUC it seems like it was just our team, but for some reason in packet 4 (I think? In any case, it was our round against ULL, which was round 4 in the tournament) our bonus conversion was drastically lower than other rounds. I'm not sure if it was just "bad luck" in getting bonuses we didn't do well on (I have a copy of the packet and we did miss out on some bonuses that we would've 30d and such), but then again we got enough tossups that it would seem to even out at least a little - did anyone else think that round had some tough bonuses too?

Anyway, thanks to the FSU group for hosting. I thought pretty much all of the moderators were excellent, and there was reasonable delay between rounds, although the break before playoffs seemed to drag on a bit (not a major deal though). The Chili's was definitely slow, and at least half the teams went there during lunch, so that didn't help. Also, thanks to the editing crew for a mostly-great set - my only complaints are ones that have already been mentioned, including repeats and some occasional out-there bonuses.

This was my first college tournament, and I had a great time. It was fun playing against teams like USF and UGA and ULL, whose members' names I've read from lurking on the college section of these forums, but who I've never met/played. Looking forward to rematches in the future.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by grapesmoker »

So, yeah, both rounds 4 and 8 (and 12) were written by me, so there's a chance they were tougher than the other ones. I tried to make my packets easier than they have been in previous years but I guess they were not easy enough.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

AdamL wrote:I'm not sure if it was just "bad luck" in getting bonuses we didn't do well on (I have a copy of the packet and we did miss out on some bonuses that we would've 30d and such), but then again we got enough tossups that it would seem to even out at least a little - did anyone else think that round had some tough bonuses too?
I think it was just bad luck. I knew about half of your bonus answers, but that's generally the case when you're not answering the other team's bonuses. FTPE, name these things that you know really well and discussed in practice two days before the tournament. Or, FTPE, name these things which are really important to your life. That happens a lot. Sometimes, you're just going to have bad luck with the bonuses. Our bonus average in that round was 3.33 ppb, but that's mainly because we got the three bonuses in the packet that were written to give us a zero.
AdamL wrote:This was my first college tournament, and I had a great time. It was fun playing against teams like USF and UGA and ULL, whose members' names I've read from lurking on the college section of these forums, but who I've never met/played. Looking forward to rematches in the future.
Yeah, you're fairly good for a freshman. Keep up the good work. We surely want a rematch sometime in the future. As you could probably tell from how I felt after the match, that packet and I didn't get along very well. It was full of stuff that I always forget. The "Anti-Jake" packet of the tournament. Thanks, Jerry.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by grapesmoker »

DarkMatter wrote:Yeah, you're fairly good for a freshman. Keep up the good work. We surely want a rematch sometime in the future. As you could probably tell from how I felt after the match, that packet and I didn't get along very well. It was full of stuff that I always forget. The "Anti-Jake" packet of the tournament. Thanks, Jerry.
You know, it took me a lot of research before I could write the definitive anti-Jake packet.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by theattachment »

everyday847 wrote:You can punctuate it with naked women if that's what it takes to make the tournament read well.
Coming (or should it be... nevermind) to an MO Trash tournament near you...

While in actual writing it may be a bad idea to have those extra commas, it really does help while reading to add the comma after for ten points. It reads well for the moderator and it reads well for players because the mod will take a break in the portion of the sentence that, let's face it, totally doesn't fit in the sentence.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: EFT 3 at FSU (Saturday, October 4)

Post by ChopinManiac »

All in all, I thought that the set as a whole was both appropriate for its intended audience and extremely well-written, with the exception of a few repeats that I'm sure will be taken care of by the rest of the mirrors this upcoming weekend. On behalf of the UGA Quizbowl team, I would like to thank Billy and the entire FSU staff for running the tournament in a timely manner, as in my limited experience finishing up the finals of a college quizbowl tournament by seven is something to be proud of. We look forward to future tournaments at FSU, which will undoubtedly include more trips to the circus that is the Tallahassee mall. My only complaint would have to be the mystery of the FSU campus Chile's showing Sex and the City on one of their large screen bar televisions at one o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday during College Football season. Billy, any explanation?
Last edited by ChopinManiac on Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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